Monday, 22 February 2016

Cranbourne was on the Great Southern Railway line which commenced construction in 1887 and was completed to Korumburra in 1891 and later extended to Port Albert. Passenger services beyond Dandenong ceased in June 1981 but goods services continued to operate. In 1992, the goods trains ceased and this is when the line beyond Leongatha was taken up. The passenger service was reinstated on December 9 1984 and continued to run until July 23 1993. After that every town beyond Dandenong was without a train service, however trains returned between Dandenong and Cranbourne when the electric train line was established (there are still no trains beyond Cranbourne but that's another story) and these photographs were taken at the official opening of this electric train service to Cranbourne on March 25, 1995.

Two other stations have since been established between Dandenong and Cranbourne - Merinda Park Station opened in conjunction with the new electrified line and Lynbrook Station opened April 2012.

Naturally at any official event there are a raft of politicians - this is Senator Gareth Evans at the podium, on the right is Robert Macellan who was then the Member of the Legislative Assembly for Pakenham. On the left is Alan Brown, Member for Gippsland West in the Legislative Assembly and Minister for Public Transport.

View of the Railway Station

Waiting for the train

A local band provided some entertainment for the occasion.

I presume this is the first train to arrive - it's nearly there!

It's getting closer! I put this photo on our Casey Cardinia Heritage Facebook page and some-one commented that 'it was good to see that good to see that they sent down a a nice shiny train for the opening. You can still see where they washed the graffiti off it!'

It's here!

Interestingly, the line to Pakenham was electrified from Pakenham to Warragul in 1954 and this was extended to Traralgon in 1956, due I believe to the traffic generated by the Yallourn open cut coal mines and power stations. This was a full 40 years before Cranbourne, even though the line beyond Pakenham has now been de-electrified.